Govt begins preparing database of sand trucks

After coming across malpractices by truckers, the state government has started preparing a database of sand trucks used for transporting river sand.

Public works department (PWD) officials and the transport department have jointly launched a statewide exercise to scrutinise documents of trucks used for transportation of sand. The special camps will be held till August 11, at which the truckers can register their vehicles.

In Tirupur, more than 2,000 trucks are expected to be registered in the special camp while across the state about 40,000 vehicles are expected. The PWD, sole custodian of sand quarries, has said that only those registered (in the camp) will be given sand transportation permit.

This is the first time data about the vehicles is being collected by the department. It will help them to curb malpractices such as utilising ‘fake’ vehicles to transport the sand. The district administrations have warned that if the documents are found to be illegal, the vehicle owners will be penalised.

The exercise comes in the wake of PWD officers noticing truckers registering false vehicle numbers, even those of two wheelers, to get additional allotment of sand. Noting that the launch of the online portal tnsand.in for sand booking has got a commendable response, a PWD officer said many sand suppliers had booked loads of sand using registered numbers of two-wheelers instead of those of trucks.

“A truck will take even three or four days to wait in the queue, get its share of sand, move out of the quarry, transport the load outside and return to take another load. So the truckers tend to register fake numbers and send in additional trucks to grab more sand,” said an executive engineer. In the absence of a database, authorities in the sand quarry were not able to verify if a truck entering the load sand was authorised or not.

When the issue came to the notice of project director (sand quarrying) A Arun Thamburaj, he directed the officials to scrutinise the documents of the vehicles used for sand transportation.

“The camp was organised for collating data and regulating sand trucks used for transporting the sand. Sand suppliers need not to bring the trucks to the camp, but the original documents. Only those vehicles that underwent scrutiny in the camp can be used for transporting sand,” said Coimbatore district collector T N Hariharan.

The truckers should produce the original registered certificates, fitness certificates, insurance, and road tax receipts. “The RTOs concerned will verify them before the PWD uploads the details on the common server,” said Tirupur North RTO Sivaguru.

Govt begins preparing database of sand trucks

“It will not be possible for the malpractice because the department has planned to have a mobile app in place to verify the documents of the sand trucks anywhere. The collected data about the vehicles will come in handy for the defence mechanism,” said a PWD officer.